You felt distressed and conflicted about something going on in your body? Your body quite likely responded to that stress in a very typical way? Too bad...twenty years in the slammer.

Another woman was charged for feticide following a suicide attempt. Many have been jailed for addictions that were deemed to have contributed to a miscarriage or stillbirth.

Where does it end? What about women who smoke, or don't have perfect diets, or don't sleep enough, or don't get the right amount of exercise while pregnat? What about women who get "too much" exercise? I knew a woman who had a miscarriage after playing tennis. The two things were probably unrelated, but you could make the case that exerting herself while pregnant was murder.

And what about women at jobs that the Supreme Court has ruled don't really have to work too hard to accomodate pregnant or lactating women? If you need the money desperately, but the job forces you to risk your unborn child's well-being, are you gonna get thrown in jail for a miscarriage then?

they won't stop.

women hating comments.

anything to protect it.

Women, brown people, etc., need to learn their place.

Or so they think

It has to stop.

please sign...

http://action.rhrealitycheck.org/page/s/condemning-indiana

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/issue-full-and-immediate-pardon-indiana-resident-purvi-patel

Uhh...isn't it established science that it's harmful to smoke/drink while pregnant?

What unhealthy habits or behaviors can pregnant women engage in (or even improve on, but not fully) without risking jail time if they miscarry, given that the burden of proof connecting the miscarriage to said unhealthy behaviors seems to be quite light?

How perfectly healthy and fetus-centered does my behavior have to be while pregnant to avoid committing a crime if my pregnancy ends in miscarriage, as do some 15-20% of known pregnancies?

being a risk to her pregnancy, by her doctor? There's a difference between knowingly and unknowingly committing misdeeds.

Under any circumstances. And while I think doctors do need to live up to ethical standards to ensure adequate and informed care, I trust women and their doctors to figure out the best options for their given situation without undue, inflexible legal intrusion.

strangers on the street chastise a pregnant woman (or perhaps one who merely appears to be pregnant) okay? is screaming at a woman for a cigarette or drink or even, goddess forfend, exercising, okay? because that is what all these laws and regulations, etc. are all about--control of the pregnant woman, control of every woman, for all sorts of reasons.

with regards to risky behavior during pregnancy.

I obviously don't endorse smoking while pregnant. My point is that in a miscarriage situation, you can draw a dubious connection to anything a woman did that wasn't quite perfectly healthy. Drinking coffee slightly increases miscarriage risk. I don't think it warrants jail. Society does not take full ownership of a woman's body when she becomes pregnant.

it started a long time ago and no one paid attention. can't wait to see where this goes.

I expect to be shipped off for glue or imprisoned or something.

Because somehow we are worthless; worthless is his mind.

I SPECIALIZE IN KICKING ASS AND TAKING NAMES; yes INDEED

Hell Yeah !!

I just woke up, what did he do now

we will kick Ben Stein Ass To The Moon

Women past childbearing who were employed as household servants. Provided, I guess, that they'd done their "duty" during their fertile years. If not, all bets off.

dystopic future. I had no idea it was going to be hundreds of pricks and pokes and votes across all the states, but that is pretty nearly where we are now.

the American Taliban in their true colors.

How many more will follow?

She was convicted on contradictory charges.

She was convicted for causing a pregnancy to terminate - killing a fetus.

She was also convicted for abandoning a baby in a dumpster. That same fetus.

If the baby "died within minutes of being born," how can it be a miscarriage? If the baby was born alive, it was not miscarried. It either died from complications of the birth or was killed.

The woman herself says the baby was stillborn, but you bold text saying it died within minutes of being born. How do we know which it is? Because if your point in bold is accurate, she is guilty of some crime, at the least of improperly disposing of a body by throwing it into a dumpster.

The facts do matter. It's possible the case was mishandled so badly we can't actually know what the situation was, but I think it important not to conflate abortion, miscarriage, and death of a child after it's born. They are not at all the same thing. Women's reproductive rights, the right to have an abortion, extend to fetuses in the womb, not living the babies. The difference is crucial.

I don't know what evidence they used to come to that conclusion. My understanding is that the medical examiner used results from a discredited "float test" in court to prove that the fetus was born alive.

The charges themselves are conflicted. She was convicted both of intentionally terminating a fetus (killing the fetus), and of neglect for abandoning a living child. I don't dispute that disposing of the fetus as described was probably not the best choice, and probably should not be legally allowed for public health reasons. But she was not convicted of irresponsibly dealing with medical waste. She was in effect, convicted of two contradictory counts of murder.

which are certainly conflicting counts. Abortion presumes it to be an unborn fetus rather than a living child. She needs a good appellate attorney to pursue this.

This is somewhat distinct from illegal abortion. It is based on a feticide law that grant personhood to unborn fetuses, ostensibly to protect pregnant women from harm caused by others. Obviously the real intent, or at least implication of such laws, is now clear.

method of determining whether or not it drew a breath of air. Not breathing would indicate dead. Breathing, live.

However, the method they used to determine this is considered comparable to throwing a witch into water. If the woman floats, she's a witch, if sinks and drowns, is not.

Definitions and facts do matter and unfortunately in this case the facts are not clear facts but opinion.

http://americanpregnancy.org/pregnancy-complications/miscarriage/

A woman who had a miscarriage in the first trimester usually simply had a mess to clean up, and if her doctor wasn't satisfied that Mother Nature had cleaned her out, he would do a D&C to make sure all tissue was gone so it wouldn't fester. My mom had one of those, but she also had one where she hemorrhaged like hell and nearly died.

On the other hand, a second or even early third trimester birth could also be termed a miscarriage. You had a fetus that was too immature to survive. Jackie Kennedy's baby was miscarried. He took breath, but his little lungs were coated in something and just couldn't function. He died within a few days.

My mother also had a stillbirth, a boy that she carried to full term, but who died in utero two weeks before she gave birth. That was not called a miscarriage.

(Doctors usually referred to miscarriages as spontaneous abortions, but frankly women found that terminology callous.)

I believe she is being sent to a women's penal facility in central Indiana - and there is a group ? that is actively working on appeal. It would be helpful to keep that thread alive and kicking - so that folks might have a chance to read about the group and get involved if so inclined.

This has mostly gone unnoticed in the wake of the Indiana Fiasco (RFRA response and pressure to fix) - but it is exactly the time that the less teaparty inclined in Indiana are more responsive to listening beyond the spin.

Thanks for this info!

Went back and looked...no it is an American state, Indiana. I still don't understand how she can be charged, but I DO understand that insane fundamentalists are in control of that state and it is now akin more to countries with the Taliban in charge.

about as bad as Dred Scott and provides yet another reason to boycott all things Indiana now and for the foreseeable future.

The only thing Ms. Patel was guilty of, as far as I can see, is the improper disposal of medical waste\human remains. IANAL, but this one really stinks.

unless you act exactly how they tell you to act.

Think I am exaggerating?

Willing to risk finding out?

I am not

I am an old guy and it even frightens me for the women in my life. I would think there is enough stress in dealing with a pregnancy without having to walk on eggshells in fear of something going medically amiss and then the possibility of being prosecuted for what is in reality a medical situation.
I won't even get into all the other bullshit that these people, who are bent on controlling women's lives, are trying to pass in state legislatures that are detrimental if not repugnant to women's lives. They will not be satisfied until they can completely dominate every aspect of a woman's life.

for being a man that cares...

my heart aches for you

It's a barbarian state. So sad.

There is something fucked up and rotten to the bone in the state of Indiana

of children "finding" guns and killing themselves or someone nearby (usually another child), but there never seem to be child neglect or endangerment charges in those cases.

What a strange country we live in.

disturbing, and... Indiana again ..

I put a link in the OP to another thread about this case, which has more information about the next steps, what to do to support Purvi.

for keeping this going... there is nothing easy about this case... but what I know to be absolutely true is that Purvi Patel is personally paying for so many other injustices that just slip by in our society... cultural oppression of women, lack of services for women, stigmas, apathy, lack of empathy, etc...

I will fight this with whatever power I have... my voice, money, letters, pleas, facts... why women everywhere are not screaming, I don't know

a jury moved by only emotion, Xtian 'moral values' and fixed attitudes decided this case (oh, and a very conservative judge- Elizabeth C. Hurley, named to the bench by Pence in 2013)...


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We are going so far backwards in women's rights we'll soon lose the vote